cygweb

I pointed to this Slashdot article in my link blog; I've only had a chance to check out Sith Apprentice so far. It's hilarious. There are some great references near the end. Required viewing!

I didn't want to blog about this until I was pretty sure I was going to do this, so here goes: I'm participating in the Bike Virginia tour this year. My dad is an avid cyclist and since we're living much closer to each other than in years past (we're now just two hours' drive apart), he invited me to join him on this tour. This is his first tour since moving to Virginia about a year and a half ago; while in the Atlanta area, he participated in two BRAGs.

I'm not an avid cyclist, but I used to be. Mainly it was when I was a teenager, and wanted to get around by myself. At least until I had a driver's license and access to motorized wheels. ;) I have a decent enough bike (a 1998 Giant Sedona SE) and have started to modify it for the tour. The first thing that was changed were the WTB Raptor MTB tires (knobbies); I put on Michelin Transworld City Tires. I also added a front pack. Other than some adjustments and some possible decorations, that's the extent of the changes to my bike.

So, what happened this weekend that made me decide to talk about this now? We took a trip down to see my parents this weekend, with my bike, and my Dad and I managed to squeeze an 18-mile ride in on Saturday afternoon. I ride occasionally, but normally it's just a quick trip to Wildwood; usually I'm on the bike about 30 minutes. This trip took about an hour and a half. Other than the soreness in my rear after I was done, I felt pretty good and realize that even though I've got a bit of training to do before June, I enjoyed myself and I don't think I'll have too much trouble getting in enough shape to enjoy the tour.

I plan on finally checking out some of the rail trails in the area so that I can do some controlled distance riding. If any of you (especially Ed) have tips, please post them or email me directly.

I'll probably blog about this on and off over the course of the next few months, and may find a ride or two in the area I'll participate in to further my conditioning. This is the first concerted exercising effort I've undertaken in a number of years, so I have plenty of motivation to make this work!

I've been listening to Blackfield and Deadwing a lot for the last month, so my new "Recommended" links are quite accurate. I'm linking to books and electronics as well. If you're reading me via RSS, you may not have seen the new layout and content. Please consider coming by and checking things out. My next step is to tweak my CSS a little.

My Recommended links are powered by an Amazon Listmania list that I'm maintaining, which is parsed by the excellent MT-Amazon Movable Type plugin.

After 2 successive weekends of visiting parents, we are staying put this weekend. It was a great day to clean. I cleaned my car inside and out, more thoroughly than usual (soap and water on the inside, believe it or not). It should smell nice when I meet up with Chuck and Scott for the official BDFL 2004 trophy presentation tomorrow. Look for a new BDFL podcast here in the next few days.

So Scott's a switcher; cool. After using Don's Mini, I definitely know that for me it would make an excellent Internet terminal or audio manager (both for my personal listening and as an ICYG server). It certainly would be easy on the eyes whether it was sitting at a desk or in the living room or kitchen.

Alas, I probably won't be getting a new computer anytime soon. No real need for one at this point. I keep drooling over the Dell LCD deals that pop up occasionally. I know that when the time's right, a 19" LCD will look really nice in my office. Now, if my workhorse Samsung SyncMaster 17GLsi would just retire itself; I think it's about 10 years old now.

Still holding out some hope for a Porcupine Tree show in Baltimore, although I think I'm prepared to go out to Philly if that's what it takes to take in my first live PT. Luckily I have some buds that aren't PT fans (aside from hearing "The Sound of Muzak" mixed in the warm-up music at a Rush show) who are open to checking out the band with me.

Ryan got into the kindergarten we were hoping for. It's amazing how much energy and worry can be expended (much of it rightfully so) dealing with your first-born's first taste of formal education.

We usually owe the IRS some outstanding tax, so we usually file pretty late. Well, this year, Manolas is now figuring into the mix and we're actually going to get some bucks back. Of course, I'm sure they will find their way back into the business some way or another.

Now is that an update or what?

'Grey's Anatomy' Keeps Sunday Time Slot

I think ABC's making the decision to keep Grey's Anatomy in the 10PM Sunday time slot after just two episodes is a little short-sighted. I've enjoyed watching it so far, but I like Boston Legal more. I like the fact that Grey's isn't trying to be "ER" (right?), but there's something about quick-witted legal antics that just get to me. ;)

I suppose if Grey's settles down to the same ratings that Legal was enjoying, it'll have to find it's own slot, right? Ehh...

I'm on the Rush.com mailing list, but I haven't actively participated on TRI-NET for quite a while. They sent me an informational email about how my address had fallen onto a member list that hadn't been referenced in a while. The first thing I saw when I went to their main page was a link to purchase a remastered version of their 2002 album, Vapor Trails. Yes, the one many of us technically savvy Rush fans had a fit over because the engineering of the recording and the mastering was not up to Rush's standards (as we understood them) and in our opinion, the music suffered. I liked Rip Rowan's take the best. I had actually produced a page on the problems using my free Comcast webspace, but had taken it down last October. It's in my archives, so I've put it back up here.

I haven't yet found anything about this more official than that Atlantic link. I hope there will be a way for me to obtain a fixed version of the album that involves trading in the "broken" one and avoiding paying full price for the CD. Assuming this is for real, of course, and that the recording has actually been fixed.

Amazon Item Link: Rush - Vapor Trails [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED]

Thanks to Don for the heads-up that my site wasn't accepting comments. I recently installed MT-Keystrokes and DBSL_Deny. After removing those, things are working. I'll have to do more rigorous testing next time.

And here I thought they were blocking 100% of spam, as opposed to 100% of comments... ;) Sorry!

I'm continuing to have great experiences with my Hi-MD Walkman, a Sony MZ-NHF800.

I've been using Duracell Rechargable NiMH 1800mAh cells with it and getting the excellent playback performance the format is known for. However, since most of my recording has been done while it was plugged into AC power, I hadn't yet tested the unit's limits when recording while on battery power. There's a sticker on the back of the unit that discourages recording or editing a Hi-MD disc while not on AC; presumably recording to a standard MD requires less power because of the lower data rates in that situation.

I took the Walkman and my new Sound Professionals mics to record our Brutal Deluxe trophy presentation ceremony last night, and figured it would be an excellent candidate for the test. I recorded to a Hi-MD disc using the PCM (uncompressed) format, which is the recording mode that requires the most power. With a freshly charged cell, the NHF800 blew me away; it sat there are recorded about 85 minutes worth of our conversation without the battery meter going down at all. I expected it to at least drain 50% of the cell's power, and was fully prepared to change batteries if required.

The SP mics performed admirably. I clipped them together in a Y-pattern and set them directly on the table at first. I immediately set the Walkman to record at low sensitivity once I saw the meters peaking on my first test. After realizing the mics were probably picking up table noise (I didn't monitor the recording on headphones, since this was casual), I set them on my unused napkin roll. That seemed to suspend them well enough; the recording is very listenable. There's also a slight stereo effect; Scott and I sat on one side of the table and Chuck was on the other.

I was also pleased with the performance of the newly-released SonicStage 3.0; the transfer process is much smoother compared to my SonicStage 2.3 experiences. The major change for me is the fact that the program offers to convert uploaded analog recordings (like this one) to WAV after they've been successfully transferred to hard disk. It was very convenient. Also, the app is now programmed to create a time-stamped file name for untitled material; it previously used the filename "untitled", and subscripted multiple untitled files with "(1)", "(2)", etc.

Now I just have to stitch together our conversation into a new BDFL podcast, encode, and upload! This is fun.

19MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 41m 36s (Torrent courtesy of Prodigem.)
19MB 64kbps Stereo MP3 41m 36s

This is a special Brutal Deluxe football podcast from Damon's, the new official home of the yearly BDFL trophy presenation ceremony. League champion Chuck, Scott and I talk about the trophy, the last two BDFL seasons, what's currently going on in the NFL, and look forward to next season's BDFL draft.

Links:

• SportPodcasts.com

Credits:

• Recorded, edited, mixed and mastered by me.
• Music: "One Big Holiday" by My Morning Jacket from the Wired CD.

I'm either considering the blog equivalent of cross-dressing or overthinking this change I've got in mind.

This fall will see my 3-year free hosting offer with 1&1 Internet lapse. While I could renew with them and get a pretty decent package, the minimal ads and associate links I run combined with my modest readership wouldn't pay the bill. Since we're already buying hosting for Manolas at InMotion, who Melissa selected and has grown to like, it makes a lot of sense for me to piggyback alexharden.org there.

Herein lies the rub: while I've never done anything with my root URL other than redirect it to my blog's URL, adding alexharden.org as a parked domain to manolashandmadesoaps.com just seems like a slacker solution. The good thing is that I'm not bothered by the site move itself, I'm just fretting over this detail. All my URLs will continue to work, it's just this root URL issue that's bugging me. What do you guys think about this?

I guess I should just view this as an opportunity to get free advertising... ;) I should add that I've verified that I could add alexharden.org as a fully separate root domain to our InMotion plan for an additional $4/month. But I'm cheap.

I officially have a concert buddy for the May 21st Porcupine Tree show in Philly. We may add one more (Mark, who's my regular Rush concert buddy) before it's said and done.

With all the fuss (pro and con) made about music file-sharing, I feel I should point out that it was ICYG's music-club streaming model that exposed Scott to PT.

Another gorgeous day here in Harrisburg. Melissa and I dug out a new planting area where she's planning to put some bushes. I'm pretty tired from that. After that, I took out the mower, changed the oil and sharpened the blade with my Dremel. I borrowed my neighbor's B&D Workbench to fasten my vise to so it could hold the blade. I'm definitely going to get one of those Workbenches for myself. I don't do much woodworking, but with one of those I'd at least be able to do more of it.

I'm chilling out now, listening to ICYG. It's rare that I can sit down and listen to more than 30 minutes of it at a time, but when I do I really dig the mix. Definitely a worthwhile effort. Thanks to my fellow members for their great submissions, especially Citrus, who's uploaded quite a few new tracks recently (and even ICYG-tagged some of them! ;) ).

MNF to ESPN, NFL back on NBC

This is surprising. Monday Night Football on ABC is one of those things I thought would never change. Sure, personalities might come and go, but, hey, if it's fall, Monday Night means prime time football. Well, I guess it still will, just on cable. This won't happen until 2006, so we can give MNF a few moving parties this coming season.

The move of Sunday Night Football to NBC will be very interesting. With some slick marketing and flexible matchups, it's sure to draw decent ratings. However, the one thing that made me think that having MNF as the league's marquee game (let's face it, MNF on cable network, even ESPN, downplays its significance) was that it was (usually) the only game played that day.

The linked article has a lot of info in it that I'll be digesting later. Had to get my initial thoughts typed down.

Update (4/19): After reading the article again, it's apparent that this was the league's only way of achieving a flexibly-scheduled prime-time "game of the week" that guaranteed good matchups with minimal fuss. I think ratings will be quite high for Sunday Night Football. However, it doesn't sound as if the Monday night game on ESPN will be flexibly scheduled.

This decision is a direct result of the parity the league has enjoyed (for the most part) for a while now due to free agency. The scheduling gods can no longer pick guaranteed marquee matchups in advance of the season.

I only own two Star Trek (The Original Series) episodes, on VHS, and they're my favorites. I just watched "Mirror, Mirror" for the first time in a while and I loved it all over again.

What's your favorite Trek?

Mark is joining us for the PT show I mentioned earlier. I almost feel like I should go grab one of the PT Street Team T's. ;)

I've upgraded this site to Movable Type 3.16.

I've been listening to my "preview" copy of Deadwing for about a month now and I have to say it's a winner. I find myself listening to the title track, "Halo", "Open Car", and "The Start Of Something Beautiful" the most. However, it's a great, cohesive album that brings a lot of enjoyment when listening from start to finish. I think the musicianship on this album is some of the greatest to be heard in the rock genre these days, and Porcupine Tree's vocal harmonies in particular (as used to great effect on 2002's In Absentia) are at times exquisite. Deadwing is highly recommended.

Sorry for the lack of posting "real" entries; I've been trying to keep the linkblog fresh in the meantime.

My wife Melissa's birthday was Wednesday, and besides a half day at work, lunch and dinner out, and cake for dessert that day, we went over to Alfred's Victorian for a dinner for two and then we went to see The Interpreter. That was quite a good movie. Lots of characters, and they keep you on your toes. Both Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn were great. And the dinner at Alfred's was great as well. I had a very well-prepared filet mignon and Melissa had a veal dish. And we shared tiramisu for dessert.

Earlier today we packaged up some more soaps in preparation for next Saturday's craft show in Lebanon. Should be fun.